Boston Built Tech founder Chuck Tanowitz sits down with guest host Molly Bales of Adappt to explore the emerging intersection of technology and real estate. “Companies need to get together and coordinate in some way,” Tanowitz says because so many of these companies are working in the same space, and it’s important that they find ways to work together. That’s why he created Boston Built Tech. Nobody was convening these groups.

Real estate technology is exploding now for a number of reasons. First, the timing was right. Cloud computing, big data along with sensor technology and mobile have arrived. In addition, money has started flowing in and the nature of the workspace has changed. Co-working is a new phenomenon revolutionizing the industry. This is particularly true in Boston.

There is a new expectation of flexibility and community in the workplace. In the knowledge economy, work has to be a place where people want to go, not just to a place where they have to go.

Built Tech is about building a community around technology and real estate, so people know what others are doing.

But real estate is still a very local activity, and it would be great to see Built Techs popping up in other communities too. New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles all have their local tech markets emerging. It will be very interesting to watch them as they continue to grow.

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Will Martin, Director of Real Estate and Facilities for Health Management Systems, attends the CoreNet Global Summit conference to network up with people as well as see what is going on with technology in the industry. It enables him to stay current on the newest in real estate and discovers out what his peers are finding useful.

He dives into detail about his current role at a midsized company and how his experience working for a large company prepared him to be successful in a smaller setting. In the larger corporate environment, he worked with a lot of square footage and a lot of people and he learned to see different perspectives from that role.

In a smaller company, you don’t need troves of data. You just need to optimize your real estate. Because of this, he focuses on being simple and effective and finding technology that people will actually use rather than just doing things just for the sake of doing them.

Will wants to decisions based on data and wants the data to drive what he is doing, because if it doesn’t the data is truly useless. Will also gives us insight into technology he sees as valuable for his role and his team. It isn’t just about the customer, but also about the team behind the technology. Will looks for technology that is effective on both sides and ensures that the tools help his team communicate effectively.

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In this episode, the Real Estate Tech Guys talk to Michael Beckerman, the CEO of CRETech, about AI and commercial real estate technology. First, we look at WeWork and how they have driven co-working innovation. We also chat about whether or not this will continue to expand, particularly because of all of the technology these co-working spaces offer to different types of companies and tenants.

Another big, game changing technology is self-driving cars, the “meteor that the commercial real estate doesn’t see coming.” This will impact the way buildings are built and will impact the way we experience real estate —with changing how we go to work and more. We’ll dive into these concepts in more depth with Michael.

The amount of growth that is happening in CRE tech is nothing short of incredible. There is extraordinary momentum even though CRE is typically the last industry to adopt technology. But this slow timeframe of adoption of technology is not because the commercial real estate industry is behind the times, but because it is difficult to determine which technologies are worth the time money.

The CRE business is highly successful and there hasn’t been a mandate needed for this new tech until now because landlords and brokers are looking for technology that attract tenants, retain tenants and keep them satisfied. The tenants are primarily looking for these technology solutions which is why there is a new need for this technology. The ecosystem is manifesting from both landlords seeking more efficient buildings and tenants looking for this high-end technology to make their business run more smoothly.

Communication within the workplace can be a hassle if you don’t find ways to both streamline it and make it engaging as well.

With more people contracting in and out and working from home or other off-site locations, workplace efficiency may suffer from a lack of coherence and community. Fortunately, as much as mobile technology has made it easier to work with people you may never see, it also makes it easier to have some sort of human contact with them.

As with all communications, the keys to effective workplace interactions are elements such as clarity, directness, respect, openness, honesty, and appropriateness. While it may be tempting to hide behind screens and cubicle walls, the technological advances in workplace communication make it just as easy to be forthright and forward thinking.

In terms of actual practices that support workplace communication, the following are quickly rising to the top of the list:Read more

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Augmented and Virtual Reality have gained massive interest in the eyes of the tech community and beyond, because of their broad applications. These technologies are ready to (greatly) benefit real estate.

You are standing in the foyer of your dream home. Above you, the cathedral ceiling offers a dazzling crystal chandelier like those in the Disney princess films. As your eye drifts over to the left side of the grand staircase, your model wife comes floating towards you in a dazzling designer gown. A beep of the horn alerts you to the arrival of your chauffeur-driven Italian sports car and you turn to see the halogen headlights seep over your Koi ponds and manicured lawn, complete with topiary depicting the pivotal battle scene in “The Empire Strikes Back.”

Suddenly, you hear a distant ringing and the room and all in it goes black.

For the consumer, the main advantage is that, instead of just flipping through Architectural Digest or scrolling through Hauzz, looking for that table or paint color that will make your home the envy of all your other social-climbing friends, you can now see yourself in the house and see everything in it, making changes in real time before you ever set foot in a real open house. Read more

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There was a time when environmental health and safety (EHS) was intended to protect people in the workplace and elsewhere from egregious hazards and to comply with an ever-growing list of laws and guidelines, many of which were developed and championed by such entities as the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). From sawdust in the supermarket to handles by the toilets, EHS-related offerings took care of every possible incident and accident before they occurred.

The IoT is a powerful industry that will (and currently) advance tech into a new era. An even more advanced IoT will be the future of Facility Management.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is drastically changing how people consume goods and services. One tap of a finger on their smartphone and people can get a ride, order a bite to eat, purchase tickets to a sporting event, schedule a meeting, and post on social media within minutes. Consumer-facing apps like Waze, Grubhub, and Uber have exploded into the lives of Americans because of the easy-to-use, intuitive features. They are the paragon of the ever-expanding self-service economy, where internet apps produce instantaneous fulfillment for the end-user.

As with all things however, the current IoT is lacking a highly critical piece of data to leverage on: people. The infinitely unique preferences of people offer powerful points of feedback that should be in the hands of decision makers, and has a variety of applications. One of these applications that could benefit highly from this human-embedded IoT is facility management.Read more

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Internal Advocates: a company’s best customers, the ones that tell all their friends to use your product are the future of business. Here’s why:

People need some necessity, or incentivization to buy and consume products. If a service or item doesn’t address a need, then it needs to provide a delight experience of some sort. If a company masters the process, then they will reap a great reward: internal advocates. These are customers that tell all of their friends and family to use your product/service on their own accord. These are the customers that will change enterprise in the tech world for a myriad of reasons:

You can share from anywhere — How easy is it for someone to send you a video on social media? Or give you a restaurant recommendation through an “instant enterprise” app, like Yelp or FourSquare? Contemporary society has become one where content and services can be sent from person to person in seconds. In a world that is saturated with tech services, how will yours become “sharable?” Queue in the Internal Advocates. When you have a following or a group of people who love your product, you can imagine the outreach can be immense when combined with instantaneous sharing features. You have viral-like advertising, and you don’t have to pay a cent to do it.

Customers become “hobbyists” —

Waze is the paragon example of building a strong community of internal advocates. They have thousands of volunteers that update their maps, giving their platform extremely powerful data.That is because these people love the features of the tech, and can do things to make it even better. Waze gets production from people who aren’t even on the payroll. This applies to Reddit as well: you have users that monitor, organize, and evaluate sub-communities on their platform because they truly enjoy the information sharing capabilities of the Reddit platform. These people are also paid $0.00, as the user moderators, or “mods,” volunteer.

The most powerful mutually beneficial relationships —

Ultimately, internal advocates build an extremely positive relationship with the technology/companies they are using. Since they trust you to give them an intuitive tool or service, they provide legitimate feedback on how to advance your services and advance your business as a whole.

A company’s customers become data points and don’t have to second-guess what works, and what needs to be built, as mysteries about product usage vanish. A system of interaction is created,where you have all the information needed to provide an awesome service and your customers have their needs met to the point where you’re recommended by them constantly.

Clean energy has grown exponentially in the last decade and a half, maybe it’s time to consider new ways to power your buildings.

In recent years, clean energy/renewable energy has made large strides in market growth, consumption, and implementation in how people power their buildings. If you’re a property manager, here are three reasons why you should think about using clean energy in the future. It’s not a decision that has to be made today, but it is one that should be considered.

Here are some simple, but worthwhile reasons, why it’s time to start thinking about renewable energy: